Let me begin by saying, if I ever run into anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to paint over bricks, I just might kill them. I feel that strongly about it.
I got to Maryland a few days ago, just in time for my 24th birthday. Doesn’t that sound old? Back when I was in high school, I never would have expected to be 24 years old, searching for odd jobs and living in a friend’s spare room. I definitely expected my future self to have their shit more together. But here I am, in a new state once again, with an odd three month chunk of time before I leave for Africa. That’s another thing. I’ll be 26 and some by the time I get back from the Peace Corps, only just starting to look for what my past self would have considered a “real adult job”. Some days I’m excited about that, and some days the idea of being 26 without ever having had anything remotely resembling a career seems absolutely crazy. My past self would surely have been horrified.
But, back to the present. As I said, I just got to Maryland. A good friend of mine recently bought a house here, and so I’m keeping her company and helping her to fix it up. Which brings me back to the bricks. Seriously, never paint bricks. It is just a bad idea. It doesn’t even look that nice to begin with, and some poor person will curse you 50 years in the future, when that stylish paint you put on there is peeling and outdated, and they would give anything to just have a nice plain brick wall as an accent feature. Because let me tell you, brick apparently soaks up paint like nothing else, and you don’t have a hope of getting it out of all the pores. The best you can hope for is a sort of rough, washed look, kind of like washed denim. And to even get to that point, it takes all sorts of toxic chemicals, complete with face masks and goggles that are forever fogging up. If you don’t know, working with strong chemicals is probably one of my least favorite things in the world. My ex-boyfriend can attest to that, from the one time we decided to clean our small, airless bathroom together, and he brought out the heavy duty cleaners that I always avoid. I just about hyperventilated then. And yet, here I am again, elbow deep in chemicals, scrubbing a wall for the sake of friendship. Well, that, and for a roof over my head that doesn’t involve my parents. But like I told Maria, if she uncovers any other brick walls in this house that she wants to restore, I’m abandoning ship, friendship be damned. And she agreed with me.
Our finished product:
Nora In Mozambique 